Frequently Asked Questions

There is no single scrap plastic price. What a load fetches depends on the polymer, the form it is in (bales, regrind, flakes or repro pellets), how clean and well sorted it is, the quantity, the incoterms and where it ships from. The practical way to read the market is to look at what sellers are currently asking for comparable material.

Here is the Scrapo Price Index - the median asking price by material across the last 12 months of listings. MT is a metric tonne; use the convert buttons for kilos or pounds:

PET bottle scrap and washed PET flakes are priced separately, because washing, sorting and grinding add cost. Baled bottles sit at the lower end, hot-washed clear flake at the upper end, and colour matters: clear and light blue command more than mixed colour. Across PET/PETE listings from the last 12 months, the median asking price is about $550 per MT, with the middle half falling between $340 and $690.

Current offers are on the PET and PETE listings page, each with its own quantity, price, condition and shipping location.

PVC scrap covers very different things - rigid pipe offcuts, profile and window scrap, flexible or soft PVC, cable granulate and blister. Rigid, single-colour PVC regrind is worth considerably more than mixed flexible scrap. Across PVC listings from the last 12 months, the median asking price is about $400 per MT, with the middle half falling between $200 and $600.

See the live PVC scrap listings for current offers by grade and country.

All three are in use. North American sellers usually quote per pound, European and Asian sellers per metric tonne, and some quote per kilo. One metric tonne is 1,000 kilos or about 2,205 pounds, so a price of $0.30 per pound is roughly $660 per tonne. Every Scrapo listing states its own unit and currency, so you can convert before comparing offers.

Baled PET bottles are the cheapest point in the PET chain, because the buyer still has to sort, de-label, wash and grind them. Price moves with bale quality: clear bottles with caps and labels removed fetch more than mixed-colour bales, and moisture or non-PET contamination is deducted on arrival. Sellers in India and South East Asia usually quote per kilo, sellers in Europe per tonne, so divide by 1,000 to compare. Across PET/PETE listings from the last 12 months, the median asking price is about $550 per MT, with the middle half falling between $340 and $690.

Live offers with their own quantity, location and terms are on the PET and PETE listings page.

India is the largest single market for scrap plastic enquiries worldwide, and rates there are quoted per kilo rather than per tonne. The rate depends on the polymer, the form, and how clean and sorted it is, exactly as it does elsewhere, but the domestic Indian market prices differently from export material because freight and import rules do not apply to it.

Scrapo lists offers from sellers in India alongside sellers shipping to India, each with its own stated price, currency and unit, so you can compare a domestic rate against a landed import rate rather than guessing at one number for the whole market.

Four kinds of business buy scrap plastic: recyclers who wash and reprocess it into flakes or pellets, compounders who blend it into a specified grade, manufacturers who feed regrind straight back into their own moulding or extrusion, and traders and brokers who aggregate loads and export them. On Scrapo there are 3,535 companies posting and sourcing material across 119 countries.

Every listing on Scrapo shows the city and country the material ships from, so you can work outward from your own location rather than starting with a global list. For scrap plastic buyers near you, post what you have with its quantity, grade and location, and buyers in range will see it. Freight is usually the deciding factor on low-value grades, which is why local and regional buyers often beat a higher price quoted from further away.

PET bottle bales are bought by washing plants and bottle-to-bottle recyclers. Washed PET flake is bought by fibre producers for polyester staple, by sheet and strapping extruders, and by rPET pellet producers. Food-grade bottle-to-bottle buyers pay the most but require documented input streams and low contamination.

See the PET and PETE page for current PET offers, each with its quantity, grade and shipping origin.

Scrapo is a directory of trading counterparties rather than a list of brand names: 3,535 companies across 119 countries, each reachable through the listing they have posted. Browsing by material shows you who is actually holding or wanting that polymer right now, which is more useful than a static company list, because availability in this trade changes week to week.

Start from the material you need. Each material page lists live offers with quantity, price, condition and the country the material ships from, so you can shortlist suppliers who can actually cover your volume and your destination before you make contact.

A recycler processes material - washing, grinding, pelletising - and sells a reprocessed product. A trader or broker buys and resells without processing, aggregating smaller loads into container quantities and handling export paperwork and logistics. Both are legitimate counterparties. Traders are often the practical route to market for a seller whose volumes are too small to fill a container alone.

A manufacturer reprocesses material itself: it runs the washing lines, extruders and pelletisers, and it can tell you what went into a batch and show you the test data. A supplier or distributor sells material that someone else made, often holding stock of several producers so it can fill an order the producer alone could not.

Buy from a manufacturer when consistency between batches matters and you want to specify the process. Buy from a supplier when you need a mix of grades, a smaller quantity than a production run, or faster delivery. On Scrapo both post directly, and the listing shows which you are dealing with.

A plastic recycling marketplace is a B2B platform where the companies holding recycled and scrap plastic list what they have, and the companies that need it find and contact them directly. Instead of calling brokers one at a time, a buyer can see current offers of a specific polymer in a specific form, quantity and country side by side.

Scrapo is one. Every listing carries the material, grade, condition, quantity, unit, price, currency, pricing terms and the location the material ships from, and buyers and sellers deal with each other directly rather than through an intermediary taking a position on the load.

Regrind is material granulated back to chip without being melted - cheapest, and variable in particle size and contamination. Flakes are washed and sized chips, typically from bottles or film. Repro pellets (also called repro or reprocessed granules) have been melted, filtered and pelletised into a consistent feedstock that runs on standard machinery, which is why they carry the highest price of the three. Bales are unprocessed material compressed for transport.

Granules, pellets and resin are three words for the same thing: plastic that has been reprocessed into small uniform beads a moulder or extruder can feed directly. "Granules" is the usual word in India, the Middle East and much of Asia, "pellets" in North America and "regranulate" or "repro" in Europe. Reprocessed granules are made by washing, shredding and extruding scrap, so they cost more than the loose scrap they came from and less than virgin resin.

Quality turns on how well the feedstock was sorted. Single-source, single-colour granules run closest to virgin; mixed-colour granules are cheaper and usually end up in pipe, pallets or dark mouldings where colour does not matter.

Post-industrial (also called post-industrial recycled, or pre-consumer) is factory scrap - runners, purgings, offcuts and off-spec production that never reached a customer. It is clean, of known origin and usually single-grade, so it fetches more. Post-consumer recycled material, abbreviated PCR, has been used and collected back, so it is more variable and needs washing and sorting - but it is what most recycled-content targets and brand commitments actually require, because only post-consumer material counts toward diverting waste.

PCR is post-consumer resin: plastic that reached a consumer, was used, was collected and has been reprocessed into usable resin. It is the material brands mean when they commit to a percentage of recycled content, because post-consumer is the part of the recycling chain their customers and their regulators actually count.

If you are buying PCR to hit a recycled-content target, ask for the documentation up front. Buyers normally want certification tracing the material back to a post-consumer source, and for food contact they will want the relevant food-grade approval. Post-industrial material is cleaner and cheaper but does not count toward most post-consumer claims.

The codes used throughout the trade are: PET or PETE, Polyethylene Terephthalate (bottles, sheet, fibre). HDPE, High-Density Polyethylene (bottles, drums, pipe). LDPE, Low-Density Polyethylene, and LLDPE, Linear Low-Density Polyethylene (film and bags). PP, Polypropylene (crates, caps, automotive). PVC, Polyvinyl Chloride (pipe, profile, cable). PS, Polystyrene, and HIPS, High-Impact Polystyrene (packaging, appliance housings). ABS, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (electronics and automotive housings). PC, Polycarbonate. PA, Polyamide or Nylon. POM, Polyoxymethylene or acetal. EVA, Ethylene Vinyl Acetate. PMMA, Polymethyl Methacrylate or acrylic.

Washed PET flake goes into polyester fibre for textiles and filling, into sheet for thermoforming, into strapping, and - where the input stream is documented and clean enough - back into food-grade bottle production as rPET. Clear flake has the widest market; coloured and mixed flake is limited mainly to fibre and strapping.

Baled PET is whole bottles compressed into bales, the form PET moves in before anyone washes it. Flake is the next step: washed, de-labelled, ground and sorted by colour. Each step adds cost and each step adds value, which is why a tonne of flake is worth considerably more than a tonne of bales.

Colour sets the ceiling. Clear flake can become anything, including new bottles and fibre of any shade, so it carries the highest price. Green and blue flake can only become green, blue or black products, so the buyer pool is smaller and the price lower. Mixed-colour flake is lowest of all. Clear with a slight blue tint still counts as clear for most buyers.

Preform scrap is the injection-moulded test tube shaped blank that becomes a bottle, rejected before it was blown: short shots, colour changes, start-up runs and out-of-spec weights. Because it never reached a filling line it is clean, unprinted, single-grade bottle-quality PET, and it is one of the better PET feedstocks you can buy.

It is normally sold by colour and by neck finish, and buyers either grind it straight back into preform production or sell it on as washed flake.

PET strap scrap is used strapping band cut off bales, cartons and pallets, plus production waste from strap extruders. It is high intrinsic viscosity PET, which makes it a good feed for new strap and for fibre, and it is usually sold loose or in bales by colour: green, black, clear and white.

What hurts the price is what comes with it: steel buckles, paper labels, dirt and mixed polypropylene strap, which looks similar but will not process together. See the PET listings for offers.

HDPE, or High-Density Polyethylene, is the rigid polyethylene used in milk bottles, drums, crates, pipe and blow-moulded containers. HDPE scrap trades as baled containers, as regrind from blow moulding, and as repro pellets. Buyers are pipe and profile extruders, crate and drum moulders, and compounders. Across HDPE listings from the last 12 months, the median asking price is about $750 per MT, with the middle half falling between $550 and $990.

Live offers are on the HDPE listings page.

LD plastic scrap means LDPE - Low-Density Polyethylene - most often as film: shrink wrap, liners, agricultural film and bags. It is traded baled by colour and cleanliness (natural and clear command the most, mixed colour the least), and as regrind or repro pellets. The main buyers are film and bag extruders and refuse-sack producers. Across LDPE listings from the last 12 months, the median asking price is about $490 per MT, with the middle half falling between $240 and $750.

See current LDPE listings.

PP - Polypropylene - turns up as injection-moulded parts, crates, caps, big bags, raffia and automotive trim. It trades as baled material, regrind and repro pellets, and is usually sold by colour and melt flow. Buyers are injection moulders, compounders and automotive suppliers. Across PP listings from the last 12 months, the median asking price is about $620 per MT, with the middle half falling between $310 and $970.

See current PP listings.

Rigid PVC pipe offcuts and reject pipe are bought by pipe and conduit extruders, fitting moulders and compounders, usually as regrind. Single-colour, uncontaminated pipe scrap with no rubber seals, metal or cement attached is worth substantially more than mixed demolition PVC. CPVC is a separate stream and should be offered as such rather than mixed into PVC.

PVC blister scrap is the clear rigid film left over from pharmaceutical and consumer blister packing: the skeletal web after the cavities are punched out, plus rejected packs. It is clean, consistent and single-source, which is why it trades at a premium to mixed PVC and why it is one of the most searched PVC grades in India.

Buyers grind it into regrind for calendering, sheet and footwear compounds. The things that move the price are colour (clear beats pink, amber or blue), whether aluminium foil and printing have been separated, and whether it is PVC or PVDC-coated, which many recyclers will not take. See current PVC listings.

Soft or flexible PVC contains plasticiser, which makes it bendable: cable sheathing, hose, flooring, inflatables, shoe soles and synthetic leather. Rigid PVC has little or none: pipe, window profile, sheet and blister. They are not interchangeable, and mixing them ruins a load, so sellers should always say which they have.

Rigid PVC is generally worth more per tonne and has more buyers. Soft PVC is priced on its plasticiser content, hardness in shore A, and colour, and goes into mats, hose, footwear and cable compound. Across PVC listings from the last 12 months, the median asking price is about $400 per MT, with the middle half falling between $200 and $600.

CPVC is chlorinated PVC, used for hot water plumbing and industrial pipework because it holds up at temperatures that would soften ordinary PVC. CPVC scrap is mostly pipe offcuts, fittings and production purge from pipe extruders.

It must be kept separate from PVC. The two look similar and contaminate each other, and a load sold as CPVC that turns out to be mixed will be rejected. Buyers are mainly pipe and fitting manufacturers who blend regrind back into non-pressure lines.

PVC film scrap is thin flexible or semi-rigid PVC sheet: packaging film, stationery and folder stock, laminating film, shrink sleeve and banner material. It is light for its volume, so it is almost always baled or agglomerated before shipping, and freight is a large part of the delivered cost.

Printing, lamination to paper or PET, and adhesive backing all reduce what it is worth, because they have to be separated out or tolerated in the final compound.

Acrylic, PMMA, Perspex and Plexiglas are the same polymer under different names. The scrap is sheet offcuts from signage, display and glazing fabrication, cast and extruded profile, and broken panels. Cast acrylic is worth more than extruded because it can be depolymerised back to MMA monomer.

Clear and lightly tinted acrylic commands the most; mirrored, painted or paper-masked sheet is discounted because the coating has to come off. Current offers are on the acrylic listings page.

Post what you have as a listing: the polymer, the form, the quantity and unit, the price or price-on-request, the condition and where it ships from. Buyers searching that material see it and message you directly. The detail that most affects response is accuracy - stating contamination, colour mix and realistic available tonnage up front avoids the back-and-forth that kills most first enquiries.

Browse by material, filter to the grade and country you need, and contact the seller through the listing. Every offer states quantity, price, pricing terms and shipping origin, so you can tell before making contact whether a seller can cover your volume and your destination. For repeat supply, ask whether the quantity shown is a one-off lot or an ongoing monthly stream - listings state which.

Scrapo carries listings from sellers in 119 countries. The heaviest trade flows are Asia and the Middle East for imported feedstock, Europe for post-industrial grades and regulated recycled content, and North America for domestic bales and regrind. Cross-border movements of plastic waste are regulated - the Basel Convention amendments apply to most mixed and contaminated plastic scrap - so confirm the classification and the paperwork for your specific grade and route before shipping.

India restricts the import of plastic waste and scrap, and the rules have tightened repeatedly, including for units in special economic zones and export oriented units that were once able to import freely. Treat any figure you are quoted for imported material as conditional until you have confirmed the current position with DGFT and the Central Pollution Control Board, or with a customs broker who clears this material regularly.

This is not only an Indian question. Since the Basel Convention plastic waste amendments took effect in 2021, most shipments of mixed or contaminated plastic waste between countries need the prior informed consent of the importing country, while clean, sorted, single-polymer material destined for recycling is treated far more easily. Sorting and documenting a load properly is often what decides whether it can cross a border at all.

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